Amelia Island Fishing Blog

Beach was full of tourist today, and I didn't see any other fisherman at all on the beach. Ocean was very flat but very muddy because of the west wind. I started fishing just at high tide, 2 PM.

Not much happened until about an hour and a half into the outgoing, when the Whiting started to bite. I caught five keepers (on dead shrimp and cut frozen mullet). Also caught three sharks, all about two feet long - two Atlantic Sharp Nose, and one Bonnet Head. I probably missed as many fish as I caught as it was hard to tell when something hit the bait with the pole bouncing around in the wind.

Used two rods; one out as far as I could get it, barely past the sandy water, and one closer into the beach. Never even got a bite on the close in baits - all bites and fish were on the rod that was out farther.

It was an amazing 57 degrees when the sun came up today, about 20 degrees warmer than it has been in the morning, so I decided to try the beach. Pretty stiff west wind, but not too cold. High tide was around sunrise, so I fished the outgoing until low tide. After two weeks in the house, I was ready to go...

Great day for fishing, but not a great day for catching. I caught four decent sized whiting, one whiting as big as a guppy, and one small trout, about 13 inches long which I sent back to grow up for next year. Whiting weren't hitting shrimp like usual, I caught all of them on cut mullet.

A good day for the pier; you won't find the weather much nicer in the middle of December than it was today. Sunny, not much wind, and just a nice day to be out fishing.

Also the weekends are a time when the regulars show up, so I think the first hour I was on the pier I spent talking to people rather than fishing. Today was a wrong side of the jetty day; that's the only place the fish seemed to be.

I caught five small Bluefish, all on the other side of the rocks, all on cut mullet around high tide. A number of keeper sized trout were caught by other fisherman, again all on the other side of the jetty. I heard reports of one Sheepshead, and saw a few small whiting caught today too.

I was hoping to catch that big redfish I almost caught yesterday again, but no such luck. So we'll have to see if we can find him later.

Today was one of those days that could be considered a really good day, but then again it could be considered a really bad day; depends on how you look at it.

I bumped into a friend around noon, Charlie, and he said he was going to the pier later on because he'd bumped into another friend, Bob, who was out on the pier fishing. High tide was about 3 PM, so I was thinking about going out today anyway, and decided to join them.

Seems like when we go fishing, at least when I go fishing, I always forget something. About half way to the pier I realized I might not have put the pier net in the truck, but no problem because Charlie and Bob both had nets and I probably wouldn't need it anyway.

I found Charlie in the parking lot, he'd was chatting with the game warden and had decided not to fish today, so I went out on the pier looking for Bob by myself. I found Bob at the cleaning table, he was cleaning a 24" red he'd caught just a little bit earlier, and was headed home because he'd been out all day. So I went to the end of the pier alone.

Surf was really up; waves breaking over the jetty from both sides, and the water was really muddy. I thought to myself that conditions looked like a good day for reds, and I remembered the net which was home in the garage. I won't need it, I thought, I'll just fish for trout and whiting.

Nothing exciting had happened (no fish) after about an hour, and the tide had just turned and was starting to go out. A lady who was visiting the island had walked out to the end of the pier, and we were chatting about fishing when I heard the drag on one rod start making noise. I picked up the rod and it didn't take long to figure out that whatever it was that was on the other end was big.

When you've been fishing for a lot of years, you can usually pretty much tell what you've hooked by the way it feels. This felt like a really big ray, but then again it didn't. It also kind of felt like a really big shark, but then again it didn't. But no doubt that whatever it was, it was big.

About ten minutes later we found what it was when I got it to the top of the water about 30 yards from the pier. It was a REALLY big red drum. A few minutes after that I had it over to the pier and I realized it was probably the biggest red drum I'd ever hooked.

So there we were. Just the three of us; the red fish, me, and the lady who had walked out to the end of the pier. Not another soul (or fish) in sight. If it was a weekend, there would have been ten guys with pier nets within screaming distance. If it would have been any other day, I would have had my net with me.

The lady graciously offered to do whatever she could to help, but I explained that without a net, there was really nothing we could do. On a short pier we could have beached the fish, maybe, but we were 2400 feet (half a mile) from the beach, the water was choppy, and I realized that if we tried to walk the fish to the beach it would probably die on the way or get wrapped around a pier piling and die, so we only had one option. As much as I hated to do it, I knew the fish was going to leave with some tackle hanging out of his mouth.

She held the rod, I put on a glove and wrapped the 40 lb. shock leader around my hand, and tried to lift the fish (which I knew full well wouldn't work and it didn't). Pop went the shock leader, bye bye Mr. or Mrs. Very Big Red Fish. Never even got the fish's head out of the water....

I can't say that I caught the biggest red fish I ever caught today, but I guess I can say I hooked the biggest red fish I ever hooked today. I'm not sure how big it really was, but my pier net, which I've seen in the water about a thousand times, is about 38 inches in diameter, and this fish was much bigger than the net. Maybe 45 inches? Maybe 48 inches? I guess we'll never know (unless I catch him again tomorrow and he still has today's hook in his mouth).

So how should we classify today, really good or really bad? I guess I'd say that today was a really good day to catch red fish, and it was a really bad day to leave the pier net home in the garage. I know there's at least one red fish in the ocean that's bigger than any of the ones I've ever caught, so I've got something to look forward to tomorrow when I go fishing again.

You can bet that tomorrow I won't forget the net...

I arrived at the pier just about at high tide, and I brought along a couple surf rods so I could work on my technique for fishing on the wrong side of the jetty. Actually a very nice day, with the exception of the temperature; another ten degrees in temperature and about ten miles per hour less in wind speed would have made it t-shirt weather instead of knit cap and gloves weather.

Maybe at this point I should explain what I mean by the "wrong" side of the jetty is, and a picture might help. The jetty runs parallel to the pier, and is much longer (couple miles maybe) than the pier. On most days, there's a very obvious difference in clarity and surface conditions on the inside and the outside of the jetties. The pier is inside the jetties; the north jetty is across the channel in Georgia, the jetty next to the pier is the south jetty. In this satellite image you can see the pier, and the south jetty running parallel to the pier.

Lots of times this fall (and other years) I've seen birds working schools of bait across the south jetty from the pier. The water there is fairly shallow (sanded in) so I've never seen any boats in the area just south of the jetty. A few people do walk out on the jetty to fish, and on some days seem to catch fish when none are being caught from the pier. So way back when, somebody, I don't know who, decided it would be a good idea to walk out on the pier, and then cast across the jetty to the other side where the fish are, and the idea caught on; most weekends you'll see a few guys fishing on the "wrong" side of the rocks.

I never got really interested in trying this technique until just recently. One of the things I like about salt water fishing is you usually don't have to deal with things on the bottom, i.e., snagging stuff. Of course if you fish across the jetty, you definitely have to deal with snagging things (the jetty) on the way back. But if the fish are on the other side of the rocks, then that logically seems to be the best place to fish. I'm too old and too off balance to think walking a half mile on top of a wet, slippery jetty to fish would be fun. So I've decided to see if I can figure out the best rigs and method for fishing on the other side of the jetty while standing safely on the pier.

First thing I did was consult one of the local experts, Charlie, when I was out on the pier last weekend. He kind of summed it up in one sentence when I asked him about his technique for getting fish and rigs back from the other side of the rocks: "You lock the drag down and crank like hell". Sounded like a plan to me.... I spooled a reel with 25 pound test mono last night, heavier than what I usually use, and added an extra long 40 pound test shock leader, and then stuck that on a 12 foot surf rod. For the actual rig, I figured the simpler the better (and the least amount of tackle lost) so I tied a large snap swivel to the end of the shock leader, and a 2 foot 30 pound test leader to that with a circle hook, and added a 3 oz bank sinker to the snap.

The bank sinker won't hold as good as a pyramid would, but it's much easier to get it up off the bottom and skimming the top of the water as it approaches the jump it needs to make over the rocks. The 12 foot surf rod, when placed in a sand spike that is hooked to the pier with bungee cords is plenty long to keep the outgoing line higher than the jetty, so you don't have to worry about being tangled in the rocks before you start trying to crank things back. The wind was north today, so that helped even more; it was blowing at my back when I casted over the rocks.

I think I've pretty much gotten the "retrieve with no fish" figured out; crank like hell, get the sinker up on a plane on top of the water, aim it at a chunk of concrete with no cracks, and when it hits the rocks it comes flying back over like a water skier hitting a ski jump. After a couple hours of fishing, my 3 oz bank sinker looked like somebody had been beating on it with a hammer, but I never got snagged on the rocks and no tackle was lost. The "cracks" in the top of jetty are between man made chuncks of concrete; there is a picture on this page which will give you an idea of what the jetty looks like at low tide; if you get the fish or the line or the sinker in one of the cracks, the party is pretty much over.

I've still got a few kinks to work out in the "retrieve WITH fish" department. It's hard to teach even small fish how to water ski when you've only got 15 seconds and 50 feet of water to do it in. Blues and whiting both have a fairly tough mouth so it's not easy to pull the hook out, and I did fly one of each across the jetty and safely up onto the pier. Trout seem to be a different story; they have a notoriously soft mouth and it's very easy to yank the hook out of a trout. I hooked several fish on dead shrimp, but when I began the process of cranking them back over the rocks, I lost them immediately. I'm going to assume they were trout. I definitely need to work on my "retrieve WITH fish" technique I think. I'll have to watch some of the other guys next weekend and see if I can get any ideas.

I don't think I mentioned it, but fishing on the wrong side of the rocks only works at high tide, or very close to high tide. There are a few rocks still five or six feet higher than the water, but at low tide there are 12 to 15 feet of exposed rocks to deal with, and ski jumping would probably be impossible. I also can't envision any method of getting a very large fish back across the rocks. Even with my drag locked down, I doubt I could crank hard and fast enough to teach a 40 inch red drum how to water ski. On a very high flood tide, or maybe with a hurricane coming up the coast, the waves might help with a big fish, but we'll figure that out later.

So far, fishing on the wrong side of the jetty is fun, it's something new to me, and on the days when the big whiting are on the other side, it seems like a good way to get a bag full to take home for dinner.

Strangely enough, the score for the day was better on the right side of the jetty; I caught 9 Bluefish (all small) and only one over the jetty, and one Whiting over the jetty. Last weekend just about all the fish I saw caught were on the other side of the rocks. I guess it's a good option to have in the tackle bucket when the fish are over there and the pier is over here....